We have seen previously that prohibiting a woman from teaching or exercising authority over a man applies to the tasks of an elder, for elders have a unique responsibility to teach and rule in God’s church. But on what basis does Paul forbid women from teaching and exercising authority? His words in verse 13 provide the reason: “For it was Adam who

Doubtless the most controversial episode in Acts with respect to gender roles is the enigmatic account about Priscilla and Aquila (18:18–26).

If male headship in the family provided the model for male headship in the church, then we discover profound implications here for Christian leadership. Far from aspiring to become the strong, dynamic, visionary leader to whom God uniquely speaks and then expecting the “flock” to follow relatively passively, the overseer-elder must ask what it

The same argument prevails in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16. If means “source,” then women are to defer to their source by adorning themselves properly.

But here a third consideration arises. Paul is not assigning Andronicus and Junia a place with the Twelve. The term apostolos is not always a technical term (e.g., 2 Cor. 8:23; Phil. 2:25).38 It can also be used in a nontechnical sense to refer to missionaries. Biblical commentator Rudolf Schnackenburg wrote, “The apostles referred to in Romans

We know from early church history that the office of deaconess was common for several centuries, granting women church leadership roles, including the responsibility to care pastorally for, catechize, and baptize other women—tasks it was felt it was inappropriate for men to perform.

Fifth, as Jewish feminist writers have frequently pointed out, it is far too easy for Christian feminists, whether evangelical or liberal, simply to label all OT patriarchy as overturned by the gospel. The OT remains an authoritative book for Christians, which, among other things, means we must be able to affirm God’s justice in arranging things

Peter is concerned rather with these wives not putting unnecessary stumbling blocks in the way of their husbands coming to Christ (v. 1). This raises the interesting applicational question of what wives (or women in church) should do in cultures where their not functioning in an egalitarian fashion becomes the stumbling block to the unsaved world.

In the book of Acts, women play significant leadership roles in the early church, with one notable exception: none are ever portrayed as elders-overseers. The same is true of the descriptive portions of the Epistles. When we come, finally, to the prescriptive texts in Paul about women’s roles in church, we discover that the most plausible synthesis